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New Friends

It's been a busy couple of weeks working on the Street Tree project, but also incredibly exciting/informative/thought-provoking/what have you! We've been meeting community members and trying to gather support from people involved at all levels of the project. From the City of Hamilton's forestry department, to McAnulty's caring neighbours, we're trying to get to know everyone!

From large scale Hamilton to small scale McAnulty, here are some of the community leaders we met:

Last week we met with Bill Longley from the Forestry Department, we found out that 65 trees have been planted so far in the Keith neighbourhood from last year. Mr. Longley even came on a neighbourhood walk-around with us in the McAnulty area to go over planting spaces for when we do our canvassing.

Jay and Bill

Councillor Sam Merulla from Ward 4, was also very welcoming and supportive of our project. Councillor Merulla was quite willing to help with advertising and providing information about the neighbourhoods. He offered to include the project in his newsletter and even invited us to his Ward meeting this Thursday (stay posted to hear about that)!

Rebecca Doll is the Community Developer for Crown Point's Neighbourhood Action Strategy. We met with her at a lovely coffee shop on Cannon and Ottawa called Cannon Coffee. She told us a bit about the Crown Point community and invited us to their Community Meeting this past Monday. At the meeting we got a chance to meet some people working and living in Crown Point and inform everyone about our project. Cindy, the owner of Cannon Coffee, offered to advertise the project in her shop (go treat yourself at Cannon Coffee and see!). We also found out about some exciting things happening in the community, like Belview Park opening, and the Pipeline Trail Project. Neighbours interested in helping green Hamilton's streets also got in touch with us and will be coming canvassing on Friday (it's not too late if you're interested in volunteering too!)! Overall, the Meeting was a great experience and already it's clear that it got the word out to more people who are going to be getting engaged with the project!

So we've gone from Hamilton to Ward 4 to Crown Point, and finally Monday we also met Barb LaFleshe, a leader and caring neighbour in the McAnulty area (see the post about the ArcelorMittal Dofasco trial from Monday for more details about our canvassing with Barb). She's offered to help us contact residents and get the word out about the Street Tree project in the local community, and together we might even be able to get a community building and Street Tree advertising event in the area!

We're hoping to meet lots more community leaders in the next while and are so glad to see how much support the project is receiving!

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2016's Street Tree Project coordinator Hannah Walters-Vida gave a report to the city of Hamilton's Public Works committee October 31, 2016, reporting on the successful outreach that garnered 62 new street trees in a section of ward three.

Over the past four summers, we have added over 200 street tree requests in neighbourhoods with higher than average mortality rates due to air pollution. The free street trees will contribute to improved air quality for generations to come.

Thank you to everyone who has supported the project in one way or another over the years.

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